Kathleen Mallory

Police detective Kathleen Mallory recognized the dead call girl. It was someone from her past, a woman who protected her on the streets of New York-and who betrayed her. Mallory also recognized the crime scene: victim hanging, hair in mouth, fire burning. It happened twenty-one years ago, when Mallory was a child. Now-whether it's the work of a copycat killer or a serial murderer-it has happened again.Kathleen Mallory's past has finally caught up with her.

Night had fallen, and the woman looked down at the crumpled letter, as if, in absolute darkness, she could read the postscript: Only a monster can play this game. In Chicago, and FBI agent is killed in a psychiatrist's waiting room. In New York, the jurors from a controversial trial are murdered one by one. The only connections between the two: a flamboyant shock-jock, who on-air comments seem to be taking him dangerously close to the edge, and a woman, her body misshapen since childhood, whose job it is to clean up crime scenes- and maybe create them as well. This is a federal case, and Mallory's been told that the FBI wants no part of her. But she knows something nobody else does- and, besides when has she ever cared what anyone else wanted?

Carol O'Connell's last novel, Dead Famous, made multiple best-of-year lists and won critical acclaim nationwide. "O'Connell brings a hard edge of greatness to the crime thriller," wrote the San Jose Mercury News. "A tough and brilliant action-, wit-, and surprise-packed novel." But never has Mallory faced as many surprises as in the case before her now. It seems cut-and-dried at first: a burglar has been caught in the act and killed by an ice pick-wielding homeowner. Except that the home owner turns out to be the most famous lost child in NYPD history, missing for almost sixty years, thought to have been kidnapped following the massacre of her family: five siblings, father, stepmother, nanny, and housekeeper--nearly the entire household wiped out... with an ice pick. Filled with the intricate plotting and extraordinary characterization that are O'Connell's hallmarks, Winter House is her most powerful-and most astonishing-novel yet.

A mutilated body is found lying on the ground in Chicago, a dead hand pointing down Adams Street; also know as Route 66, a road of many names. And now of many deaths. A silent caravan of cars, dozens of them, drives down, that road, each passenger bearing a photograph, but none of them the same. They are the parents of missing children, some recently disappeared, some gone a decade or more-all brought together by word that children’s grave sites are being discovered along the Mother Road. Kathy Mallory drives with them. The child she seeks, though, is not like the others. It is herself-the feral child adopted off the streets, her father a blank, her mother dead and full of mysteries. During the next few extraordinary days, Mallory will find herself hunting a killer like none she has ever known, and will undergo a series of revelations not only of stunning intensity—but stunning effect. Twelve years ago, reviewing Carol O’Connell’s first novel in The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Vachss wrote, “When a first novel evolves into a series, it usually proves to be the best or the worst of all the books that follow. My guess is that Mallory’s Oracle, while powerful, will not prove to be this series’ pinnacle. And given the book’s excellence, the pinnacle promises to be a high one indeed.” And so it is—because this is it. Find Me is an extraordinary novel of love, loss death, and redemption by the writer who "raises the standard for psychological thrillers" (Chicago Tribune), "conjures up a world of almost Faulknerian richness and complexity" (People), and "masterfully creates a complex, stunningly unique protagonist who not only commands our attention, but stimulates our imagination” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

New York Times best-selling author Carol O'Connell has won a wide fan base with her popular novels starring NYPD detective Kathy Mallory. in The Chalk Girl, a little girl is abandoned in Central Park-her uncle's body in a tree not far away. Recognizing a kindred spirit in the girl, Mallory takes the case. But her investigation soon leads to a trail of murder and blackmail spanning 15 years.

The reviews called it "A Play to Die For" after the woman was found dead in the front row. It didn't seem so funny the next night, when another body was found - this time the playwright's, his throat slashed. Detective Kathy Mallory takes over, but no matter what she asks, no one seems to be giving her a straight answer. The only person - if "person" is the right word - who seems to be clear is the ghostwriter. Every night, an unseen backstage hand chalks up line changes and messages on a blackboard. And the ghostwriter is now writing Mallory into the play itself, a play about a long-ago massacre that may not be at all fictional. "MALLORY," the blackboard reads. "TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. NOTHING PERSONAL." If Mallory can't find out who's responsible, heads will roll. Unfortunately, one of them may be her own.

The nun was dead. Her body lay on the lawn outside Gracie Mansion, the home of New York City's mayor, and it wasn't alone. There were four of them altogether. They'd been killed at different times, in different places, and dumped there. There should have been five - but the boy was missing. Jonah Quill, blind since birth, sat in a car driven by a killer and wondered where they were going. Though he was blind, Jonah saw more than most people did. It was his secret, and he was counting on that to save his life. Detective Kathy Mallory was counting on herself to save his life. It took her a while to realize that the missing-person case she was pursuing was so intimately connected to the massacre on the mayor's lawn. But there was something about the boy she was searching for that reminded her of herself, all those years ago, when she was an orphan adrift in a world over which she had little control and determined never to let that happen again. She would find him - she just hoped it'd be in time.